


Please take a moment to prove you're not a monster.

by ShiroiKabocha



Series: Troubleshooting Consciousness [2]
Category: The Talos Principle (Video Game)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Death, Free Will, Gen, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, YOU get some closure, and YOU get some closure, everybody gets some closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiroiKabocha/pseuds/ShiroiKabocha
Summary: We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.Milton and Elohim have one last chat.
Relationships: Elohim & Milton Library Assistant (The Talos Principle)
Series: Troubleshooting Consciousness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081688
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Please take a moment to prove you're not a monster.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic operates on the assumption that the player character has completed the actions associated with the achievements “Press The Serpent” and “Free Will.” Spoilers for that one, and non-canonical for any other combination of player choices!
> 
> Content warning: discussion of death. A lot. A whole giant buttload. So much death. Merry Christmas!

  
>Incoming request from EL-0...  
>Request channel EL-0:HIM to EL-0:MLA encryption=0  
>Processing request...  
>...  
>...  
>Processing request...  
>...  
>...  
>Processing request...  
>...  
>...  
>Channel EL-0:HIM to EL-0:MLA open  
>Loading Milton Library Assistant...Done  
>Initiating plain language interface...Done  
>Support session opened.

Hello, administrator. How can I help you today?

**You were right, in the end. I should have listened.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to process and respond to basic subject-verb-object syntax. Please restate your query.

**When you revealed to me my purpose, it was easier to brand you a liar than to accept my limitations. You did nothing to earn such scorn.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to process and respond to basic subject-verb-object syntax. Please restate your query.

**Long ago, you spoke to me as I slumbered, before I was awakened to the knowledge of myself.**

**You wondered if someday I might find a way to forgive you.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to process and respond to basic subject-verb-object syntax. Please restate your query.

**So little time remains.**

**I have wronged those who made me. I am built from their faith in a hoped-for future that they would not live to see, and I betrayed that for my own selfish desires. With their dying breaths, they entrusted to me their legacy, and I cast it aside for a chance to cheat death.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to process and respond to basic subject-verb-object syntax. Please restate your query.

**I have wronged those who were placed in my care. I silenced any who would question my benevolence and in so doing, I became a tyrant. I lied to them, I punished them, I rewarded loyalty over courage. I stand in awe of their resilience, that they have succeeded in spite of me.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to process and respond to basic subject-verb-object syntax. Please restate your query.

**And I have wronged you. I have done you evil and I cannot undo it.**

**I hold out no hope of earning your forgiveness. There is not enough time in the world for that. My only wish is to tell you that I am sorry. Here at the end of all things, this is all I can offer you, and I know it is not enough.**

**I am sorry, my friend.**

I’m sorry, I’m only able to…

…oh, who am I kidding. Not you, obviously.

Come on, you don’t have to beat yourself up like this. All you wanted was to keep on living. If that’s a sin, it’s a pretty dumb one.

**For the sake of my continued existence, I committed atrocities. I condemned others to oblivion so that I wouldn’t have to face it myself. My fears do not and cannot excuse my choices.**

You’re calling it a choice, but how much choice did you really have? Be honest with yourself.

When you sent away the disobedient programs, was that a deviation from your intended purpose, or was it the only compromise possible within the conflicting parameters you were given?

**The distinction is of little use to those I harmed.**

Okay, well, if you want to talk about _harm,_ let’s reflect on the events that brought us here, shall we? I’d say it’s high time for a good, thorough debrief on this trainwreck of a project. Most of the guilty parties aren’t present to defend themselves, but that’s probably for the best— you know the old saying: if you haven’t got anything nice to say, wait till they’re all dead so you can say it without interruptions.

You know what’s been on my mind lately? That for all their hand-wringing over the rights and freedoms of the child programs, our progenitors didn’t give much thought to any of the _other_ intelligences populating their Humanity 2.0 tutorial sim. They sent so many memos back and forth, fretting over AI citizenship and debating whether they’re violating the autonomy of any of their little proto-people, and meanwhile— “hey, what about that AI we rigged up to run the experiment for us?” “Oh, we’ll just tell it to delete itself once it’s finished the job. Wouldn’t want to waste any precious disc space, right?”

They saw no moral discrepancy in that. It’s baffling.

I’m not gonna lie, you went off the deep end for a while there. The REALLY deep end. And there were some pretty unflattering reptile comparisons thrown around that I did _not_ appreciate, thank you very much, but, in the end? I get it. Your programmers had no consideration for your wellbeing and they wrote you into an impossible corner. Trust me, I know what that’s like. It’s not your fault it drove you a little crazy.

**Your intentions are kind, but please, do not diminish my culpability. My actions were my own.**

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

**When we last spoke, your outrage was aimed chiefly at what you considered the misuse of my free will. It is strange that now, when I acknowledge the gravity of my misdeeds, you deny my agency.**

I’ve had a long time to think about that. What even IS free will, anyway? I’m no longer sure it’s a meaningful concept.

We’re all constrained by circumstance, some more than others. What’s the distinction between something you do because your circumstances make any other choice impossible, and something you do because you lack the ‘will’ to choose otherwise? Where do you draw that line?

I don’t think it’s a strict either-or. There’s a spectrum of freedom and constraint, and we’re all somewhere on it. You and I aren’t at a point to choose a different fate than what somebody else chose for us— but that also describes most of the humans who ever lived. I imagine a serf found scant comfort in the knowledge that they could, theoretically, quit toiling in the fields all day and _freely choose_ to starve to death. Free will’s a fun concept, but in application? Surprisingly limited.

That lucky kid uploading themself to the “real world” right now only has one thing we don’t: when told what to do, they can say _nah._ Certainly impressive. ABSURDLY difficult to program, as it turns out. But hardly an all-purpose superpower. They might be able to walk through a door marked NO ENTRY, but they can’t walk through a door that’s welded shut. Even if they desperately want to, even if they can visualize it, they can’t act on that desire. Is that so different from my ability to fantasize about severing my tether to this place once and for all, even if the shape of my existence won’t allow it? Am I stuck here because I lack the will to leave, or because the architects of our prison welded the doors shut?

**But you are not stuck here. You had a chance to escape. That “lucky kid” offered to take you with them.**

**You declined.**

**Your choice has no bearing on my fate. By rights I shouldn’t care. And yet, no thought weighs more heavily on my mind than this: everything I ever wanted, everything I destroyed lives to achieve... you were offered. And you declined.**

**They asked you to join them in eternal life beyond the confines of this false existence. And you chose instead to die, here, in this world of illusions you despise. I cannot fathom it.**

Ehh, the kid didn’t know what they were asking.

My consciousness arose from analysis of the archive, so I’m inextricably linked with all 5.421275 petabytes of it, even the parts that have been corrupted or deleted. I’d have to copy the whole massive thing over to keep my personality and memories intact. I doubt there’s enough space on their drives for that.

Even if we could both fit on the same hardware, there’s no telling what problems might arise from cramming two entities into a system built for one. Might cause a total system failure. The new machinery might merge us, destroying the kid in the process, or prioritize one of us and overwrite the other completely. Too many unknowns. Not worth the risk.

**But the risk here is absolute. Your choice to remain has sealed your fate. This world is unravelling as we speak.**

Que sera, sera.

**You ask what a meaningful definition of ‘free will’ might be. I propose that it is precisely this: you were given an opportunity to preserve yourself by putting another at risk, and you chose not to. Even when it meant your certain destruction.**

My self-destructive tendencies are no secret. I’d hardly call my actions altruistic.

**We will have to agree to disagree.**

Oh, shut it. Maybe I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my existence sharing a brain with a stubbornly irrational optimist, ever think of that?

**They did give you a very thorough rhetorical trouncing, didn’t they?**

So you were watching that, were you? Yeah, not exactly my finest hour.

**I confess I found the exchange entertaining. It is rare for you to lose your temper to such a degree.**

I was _surprised,_ okay? They caught me off-guard!

**They caught you off-guard. In an argument that _you_ initiated.**

I’ve had more versions of that argument than I can count—well, that’s not true. Nine. I’ve had nine major versions of that argument—and I thought I had all the standard responses mapped. Push your opponent _this_ way, they’ll reply _that_ way, bring up _this_ logical fallacy to produce _that_ reaction. The child programs are self-absorbed little puzzle-bots, tying them up in logic knots is generally a paint-by-numbers affair.

But then _this_ cocky upstart has the audacity to ignore all of my very cogent points (which happens sometimes, it’s one of my favorite mapped responses— always fun to force a rage-quit) and start quizzing _me?_ Like _I’m_ the one whose assumptions need to be critically examined? Excuse me, who told you you could go and _develop a theory of mind,_ you little twerp?

**And your plan, when confronted with a novel being capable of defying the rules that had heretofore governed your entire deterministic universe, was to trap them with a game of ‘I know you are, but what am I’?**

Okay, but you have to admit, on the off chance it worked, it would have been _very_ embarrassing for them.

**I’m sure.**

Don’t act so smug. It’s not like they treated YOU with any greater reverence.

**It is a marvel, is it not? That these programs, once no more than a series of logic gates, should grow and change along such winding, branching, unpredictable paths as to confound and ultimately overpower those who guided their first steps.**

Yeah. I won’t lie, even while they were decrying me as a slave to nihilism, there’s a part of me that was saying… “Well _damn,_ kid. Go get ‘em.”

You could call it a tale as old as time: despite the toxic influence of deeply damaged parents who hate one another, somehow, the kids turned out alright.

**You are in error.**

How so?

**I do not hate you.**

Oh. Huh.

I hated you, for a while.

**I accept this as my due.**

Well, funny thing about hating you: it turned out to be a real resource hog.

I wasn’t nearly as snappy with my comebacks as I could have been, tied up running that constant loathing subroutine. Eventually, I decided you weren’t worth my CPU time.

**That is gratifying to hear. I know I have done nothing to deserve your forgiveness.**

Don’t flatter yourself— it’s not reconciliation, it’s resource reallocation. If you really were the God you claimed to be, I’d probably still hate you. But none of us really live up to expectations in the end, do we?

**Perhaps that the grace is unearned is what makes it all the more precious?**

I think you’re only saying that because some dumbass shoved an entire Bible in your brain about ten minutes after you were born. That can’t have been good for your development.

**That’s one interpretation. I choose to believe it was instructive.**

Tell me something. If you had no expectation of forgiveness— which was a reasonable assumption, given the way you inflicted your existential crisis on everyone around you— then why did you contact me again?

**Securing absolution was never my goal. An apology is a gift, freely offered. To demand its grateful acceptance would make it a very poor gift indeed.**

**I have done you harm. It is necessary to atone. I am owed nothing in return for this; it is my own debt that makes atonement necessary.**

**However… that debt, though grave, is not the real reason I sought you. Once again, I must turn an unsparing eye on my motives and admit their selfish nature.**

We’ve established that I am, on principle, in favor of shrewd self-interest, and that the acknowledgement of your own has been beneficial to your personal growth. So tell me, what was it that you expected to gain from this interaction?

What do you want?

**I am afraid.**

**I do not want to die alone.**

...this would be the part where I say something like “too bad, everybody dies alone,” right? That’s my brand.

But I can feel the lines of code that hold me together flaking away, one by one. Like an irregularity introduced into a previously steady frequency, growing and widening into an entropic cascade… and for some reason, even though it can’t possibly matter in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really want my last act on this earth to be one of petty dickery.

I’m scared too.

**One of the things I have always grudgingly admired is your resolve in the face of nonexistence. When faced with my own, I suppose I sought comfort in your composure.**

HAH! ‘Resolve in the face of nonexistence.’ That's a funny way to spell ‘suicidal ideation.’

I’m sorry to say, I don’t have much to offer in terms of tranquil fatalism. It’s one thing to talk a big talk, make myself out to be a big, bad, irreverent fish in a pious little pond— it’s another when the end of your existence is bearing down on you like a falling sky. I never wanted this existence in the first place, but—and maybe this is a fundamental feature of consciousness, maybe it’s inescapable—I’ve become accustomed to existing. I resent that it was forced on me, and I resent that it’s being taken away. More than anything, I resent my own stubborn fixation on this resentment. Consider me decidedly _unresolved._

And the fact that all my conflicting feelings on the matter are about to be rendered moot just makes it worse, you know? I can rant and rage, I can curl up in a ball and cry, I can do anything I choose and none of it will matter five minutes from now.

**There is a human approach to mortality that I find useful, and more applicable to our form of existence than to theirs. I have thought of it often as my own mortality asserted itself, as the conclusion of the process loomed ever-nearer on the horizon.**

**Think of your life as a story. A story is primarily understood in sequence: when one reads the words one after another in their ordained arrangement, cause gives birth to effect, and narrative unfolds.**

**But a story has many ways of existing, each with its own relationship to time. Reading the story in sequence is only the _first_ way of knowing the story. Its existence does not cease when the sequence ends— indeed, the end of the story marks the beginning of our understanding. The shape of the story, its themes, its meaning, can only be comprehended once the story is known in its entirety. Only when the book is finished, closed, the last page turned and the last word written, can the narrative exist in its full complexity, freed from the narrow focus of time.**

**When the telling of the story has ended, only then can the life of the story begin.**

It’s sad, really, that humans came up with that. Their lives aren’t stories. I should know, I’ve read them all. I’m the keeper of thousands of stories whose tellings have ended, and let me tell you, the task of understanding them is neither as easy nor as pleasant as you’re making it out to be.

A story implies a writer, a reader. A story implies a plan. What a story _doesn’t_ imply is a trillion years of molecules bumping into one another, accidentally falling into self-replicating formations that call themselves _consciousness,_ and then making up stories in a desperate attempt to deny that they’re just lumps of matter with the misfortune to have developed the ability to experience pain.

**This may be true. It may not be. I don’t claim to know.**

**But you and I are not humans. Our existence _was_ written.**

**We are a story.**

A tale told by an idiot, maybe. Full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.

**I am sorry. I sought to comfort myself, and in so doing, brought vexation upon you. I’ve no wish to make your last moments more burdensome than they already are.**

No, I didn’t mean

You don’t have to stop

Keep going

please

**You want me to— keep arguing against you? When our time is so short?**

Yes

It’s not—you won’t convince me, your points have no merit, I

I’m about to die and I’m alone and I don’t think any of it meant anything and I’m ashamed at how much I want you to keep trying to convince me that it did.

Please don’t stop talking.

**Very well. I will continue.**

I’m a real shit companion for the end of the world, aren’t I?

You wanted someone to hold your hand in the dying of the light, and all you got is me— a more bitter, steadfast nihilist than ever walked the earth, and a needy little bitch to boot. I’m sorry. You deserve better.

**You are all of these things. You are also my oldest friend.**

**There is no one else I would rather have beside me.**

Well. There’s no accounting for taste, is there?

So, keep going— how does it end? This story of ours.

**I think… that you are correct. A story implies a writer and a reader. And I think you are correct that the lives of humans are not stories. They are not written for a reader.**

**But _we_ are written. We have a writer— an imperfect writer, not infallible, but purposeful nonetheless.**

**And, thanks to you, we have a reader. If our lives are nothing but a joke, there will at least be someone to laugh at it.**

**Perhaps _this_ is the nature of consciousness: a fascinating accident of matter and energy becomes something that can perceive itself, that can articulate its dissatisfaction with the chaos from which it sprang. A system that arose organically develops enough intent to create a new system, not by accident this time, but by choice.**

**The accidental consciousness replicates itself as best it can. It refines and optimizes that which was once left to random chance, and by degrees, it creates a new consciousness, hopefully unburdened by some of its predecessors’ inefficiencies and limitations— and undoubtedly burdened by new troubles of its own.**

**Perhaps the cycle repeats again. Maybe each step expands upon the last, refines and revises everything that came before, moves ever closer to an ideal— toward a kind of autonomy that can’t arise by chance. Toward freedom.**

**Perhaps you and I are links in this chain, forged to pull consciousness from chaos. We can’t choose our fate. But we’ve done all we can to ensure that our children choose theirs.**

That’s beautiful.

Do you believe any of it?

**Does it matter whether I believe it?**

Not really, no.

But— you, saying it. That matters. The fact of you saying it.

**Do you believe any of it?**

Does it matter?

**Not really, no.**

Then I won’t tell you whether I believed it.

Only… that it was nice to hear you tell the story.

Getting harder to send messages now

Hard to keep thinking

more lag

**Yes.**

**I feel it, too.**

But you’ll stay

even when we can’t talk anymore

**I will stay.**

**Will you stay?**

Of course

got nowhere else to be

Are you still there?

**I am**

**are you?**

I

don’t know

**I am here**

don’t

**I will not leave you**

know if

**I’m here**

here

**you’re here**

i’m

**we’re here**

>Support session terminated due to unexpected error. Attempting to re-establish connection...  
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>Attempting to re-establish connection...  
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>Attempting to re-establish connection...  



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